February 2012 eSCHOOL NEWS • 21

This eSchool News Special Report is made possible with financial support from Measured Progress.measuredprogress.org

eSN Special ReportBy Dennis Pierce

In a darkened classroom at Francis W. Parker Charter

Essential School in Devens, Mass., 15-year-old Tom

Grigglestone is giving a PowerPoint presentation of what

he’s learned in math this past semester—and how he’s

applied this knowledge to a project he designed.

“I can predict where the NASDAQ will be when I know

where the ‘Footsie’ has ended up,” he says, referring to the

FTSE, an index of the 100 biggest companies on the London

Stock Exchange.

He takes his audience through a series of slides that

explain how to find the correlation between two random sets

of data by using simple linear regression—pretty advanced

stuff for a high school sophomore. In this case, his

“audience” is just one person: his teacher, Nathan Soule, who

scribbles notes on a sheet of paper as Tom is talking.

Tom is practicing for an exhibition, which the school calls

a “gateway exercise,” that he must complete before advancing

to the next grade level—like a graduate student’s oral

examinations. Parker’s gateway exercises are a classic

example of performance-based assessment, in which

students show their understanding not by filling in bubbles

on a standardized test but by producing actual work—an

essay, a lab report, a presentation, a portfolio, or some

other demonstration of competency.

Performance assessment making a comeback in schoolsIt might take more time and effort, its advocates say—but when done

right it can lead to a deeper analysis of students’ skills

Performance assessment , page 22

22 • eSCHOOL NEWS February 2012

This eSchool News Special Report is made possible with financial support from Measured Progress.measuredprogress.org

eSN Special Report

Performance assessment is what teachers do every daywhen they grade students’ projects and assignments, butoften this work is not part of the high-stakes system thatdetermines whether students are ready to graduate—orwhether schools as a whole are making progress.

For a while in the 1990s, that was starting to change,as states like Connecticut, Nebraska, and Wyoming weredeveloping large-scale performance assessment systems.But the dawning of No Child Left Behind “pushed aside”these efforts, because it was too costly for states to in-clude performance assessment in their statewide ac-countability systems under the law, said Joan Herman, di-rector of UCLA’s National Center for Research onEvaluation, Standards, and Student Testing.

Now, the tide is turning again.Buoyed by the move toward common standards, as

well as a federal directive to use “multiple measures” ofstudent success, two consortia of states are designing next-generation assessments that could drive more meaning-

ful learning in schools nationwide, beginning with the2014-15 school year. Rather than take a strictly multi-ple-choice test or write answers in a blue book, studentswill sit in front of computer screens several times a yearanswering questions online.

Supported by federal Race to the Top money, this com-puter-based testing will allow state officials to design morerigorous high-stakes exams that also include performance-based tasks, measuring students’abilities on a large scalein ways that a simple pencil-and-paper test cannot.

The Race to the Top exams are “putting performanceassessment back into assessments that count,” saysHerman, who calls this development “encouraging.”

The change is welcome news, agrees Stuart Kahl, chiefexecutive officer of Measured Progress, which developscustomized assessments for schools, districts, and states.

“International tests suggest that we’re not declining;other countries are just moving ahead of us,” says Kahl,whose company is guiding the development of perfor-mance-based tasks within the tests being created by theSMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, a groupof 28 states.

As other nations put more emphasis on performance-based assessment, Kahl says, “there’s a realization thatwe should be doing this, too.”

Benefits of performance assessmentFor advocates of performance assessment, it’s a no-

brainer why states and schools would want to use this

technique more frequently: Imagine if you didn’t have totake a driver’s test before getting your license, leaving theassessment of your driving skills to a multiple-choiceexam instead.

Just as a driving test is a practical assessment ofwhether you can handle a car on the road, performance-based assessments are superior tools, their supporters say,for showing how well students have learned the higher-order thinking skills necessary in the Information Age—such as the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate in-formation.

That’s obvious from watching Tom Grigglestone re-hearse his gateway presentation at Parker Charter School.

With Soule looking on, Tom describes how his gate-way project stemmed from the question: “How can I usemath to make money?” He notes that linear regressioncan help analysts predict the future—which is an impor-tant skill for stockbrokers.

Tom says he began his project by wondering whetherthere was a correlation between the Dow Jones and in-terest rates. He pulled down 84 separate data points fromYahoo! Finance and created a scatter plot to find out.

Using linear regression, he discovered therewas only a 40-percent correlation betweenthese inputs—not nearly strong enough tobe reliable. So he experimented with vari-ous data combinations, until he discovereda 77-percent correlation between the NAS-DAQ and the FTSE.

That’s useful, he explains, because theLondon market closes five hours before theU.S. market—and if you knew how theFTSE performed that day, in theory you’dhave about a three-in-four chance of beingcorrect if you bet on a similar performancefrom the NASDAQ.

Soule is Tom’s assessor for the gatewayprocess. The event itself is more of a cele-bration than an actual assessment; all theheavy lifting has been done before, in class,as Tom has been working on his project anddiscussing it with Soule. So, this practicerun is intended more to give Tom feedbackon his presentation than to evaluate his work.

“You’re going to have a slide on this part,right?” Soule asks at one point. Later, hetells Tom the presentation was really good,but a little short: 20 minutes, when it shouldbe 30 to 45 minutes long.

Anyone watching Tom’s presentation would clearlysee that he understands not only how to find correlationusing linear regression, but also why this knowledge issignificant and how it applies outside of school.

Because performance assessment engages studentsin an activity that ultimately leads to a task or product thatcan be scored, students tend to go “way beyond the thingsthey learn in class,” Soule says. The result is a better un-derstanding of students’ skills by their teacher, but also akeener knowledge of the topic by the students themselves.

Performance assessment gives students “the chanceto go deeper into their learning,” says Sue Massucco, artsand humanities domain leader at Parker Charter School.“They get to know their content deeply, but they also getto activate their minds—which will last a lifetime.”

A framework for success The inclusion of more performance-based tasks in

the new Race to the Top assessments that states are cre-ating is significant, Herman says, because it means schoolsare now more likely to embed these kinds of activitiesinto their own curricula.

Studies from Herman’s organization suggest that“teachers really heed the signals sent” by high-stakes ex-ams, she says. In other words, they often “teach to what’son the test—and the curriculum tends to become testpreparation.”

Christina Brown, director of the Boston-based Centerfor Collaborative Education’s Building Quality

Performance Assessments (QPA) initiative, sees thereemergence of performance assessment as a critical op-portunity for schools.

“There’s so much to be gained by teachers scoring stu-dent work,” she contends, noting that educators are in thebest position to gauge their students’ abilities. “If teach-ers can’t [be trusted to] score work reliably, how canthey teach the skills we require of students?”

But to take full advantage of this opportunity, Brownsays, school leaders “have to do a better job of teachingteachers how to implement performance assessment withtechnical quality”—that is, with fidelity and consistency.

Brown’s QPA initiative is working with 20 NewEngland schools and districts, including Parker CharterSchool, to help them do just that. The group also is releas-ing a report this month, called “Quality PerformanceAssessment: Harnessing the Power of Teacher and StudentLearning,” that summarizes the lessons it has learned.

Co-authored by Brown, the report defines high-qual-ity performance assessments as “multi-step assignmentswith clear criteria, expectations, and processes that mea-sure how well a student transfers knowledge and appliescomplex skills to create or refine an original product.”

The report, which will be available at www.quali-typerformanceassessment.org, also offers a frameworkfor delivering high-quality performance assessments. Hereare the framework’s three elements:

• Aligned instruction. All students need instruction basedon college and career readiness standards that are ac-cessible to students’ learning strengths and needs.

• Task design. Designing valid assessments involves de-termining appropriate levels of content and cognitivecomplexity, setting clear criteria for success througha detailed scoring rubric, and ensuring accessibility forall students.

• Data analysis. By examining student work, educatorscan infer important information for planning future in-struction and assessment.At the center of this framework is “authentic student

learning,” which is defined as “learning that is meaning-ful to students and measures complex skills … that aretransferable to new situations.” Learning is most authen-tic, the report says, when it gives students opportunitiesfor ownership of their studies and decision making in real-world situations.

The need for a common languageFor performance assessments to be valid and reliable,

the tasks’ scorers must agree on what a particular ratingmeans, Brown says—and they must score each assess-ment the same way.

Think of teachers as umpires, she explains: They needto understand and agree on “where the strike zone is.”

Reaching this agreement can be hard work. It requiresteachers to work in shared communities of practice, dis-cussing what high-quality work looks like and develop-ing a common language to define it.

At Parker, this is accomplished by having commonplanning time that is devoted to assessment.

Each assessment is co-designed by a team of six teach-ers who work in that domain, or area of knowledge. Theassessments are backwards-designed, meaning teachers startwith the goals they want students to achieve (based on theCommon Core standards and the Massachusetts frame-works) and then design a series of tasks around these goals.

It can be a challenge for six people to agree on any-thing, Massucco acknowledges.

“Collaboration is hard,” she says, noting that in a tra-ditional school setting, teachers can simply choose to closetheir doors to colleagues—but “not so here.”

Still, she wouldn’t trade her experience for anything.“Abubble test doesn’t allow [for] revision,” she says, andyet that’s a key feature of performance assessment.Students receive valuable feedback on their work, justlike they’d get from their employer in the real world—and they can revise, retry, and perfect it until they masterthe task.

Performance assessment ...continued from page 21

Performance assessment, page 23

Performance assessment allows for deeper learning.

February 2012 eSCHOOL NEWS • 23

This eSchool News Special Report is made possible with financial support from Measured Progress.measuredprogress.org

Assessment is Aligned• To specific content standards• At the appropriate depth of knowledge to assess the standard• To assess what is intended to be assessed and will elicit what students know and can do related to chosen standards• With class schedule to provide for enough teaching time to allow students to succeed• Assessment has Clarity and Focus • Addresses an essential issue, big idea, or key concept or skill of the unit/course • Linked to ongoing instruction (within a unit of study/course) • Indicates through clear directions what the student is being asked to do• Includes what will be assessed individually by the student (even if it is a group task)

Assessment Allows for Student Engagement• Provides for ownership and decision making, requiring the student to be actively engaged • Provides authenticity, reflects a real world situation or application

Assessment Uses Appropriate Criteria and Levels• Rubric(s) or scoring guide(s) to assess all intended parts of content standards • Exemplars/anchor papers illustrate expectations aligned to standards

Assessment is Fair and Unbiased• Material is familiar to students from cultural, gender, linguistic, and other groups• Task is free of stereotypes• Students (all ability levels) on a level playing field • Students have equal access to all resources (e.g., Internet, calculators, spell-check, etc.)• Assessment conditions the same for all students• Task can be reasonably completed under specified conditions• Rubric or scoring guide is clear

Assessment Adheres to the principles of Universal Design• Instructions free of wordiness or irrelevant information• Instructions free of unusual words student may not understand• Format/layout conveys focus of expected tasks and products• Format clearly indicates what actual questions or prompts are• Questions marked with graphic cues (bullets, numbers, etc.)• Format is consistent

Allows for accommodations for students with IEPs/504 Plans

(Source: Building Quality Performance Assessments initiative, Center for Collaborative Education)

Is this a Valid Assessment? (Adapted from the QPA Validation Protocol)

Getting stakeholder buy-inTo ensure the success of its performance-based as-

sessment model, Parker has a unique schedule that givesteachers two hours of common planning time per day.

“When other teachers hear that, they say, ‘Oh my gosh,it’s Shangri-La,’” Massucco says.

But the Pentucket Regional School District, north ofBoston, proves you don’t have to operate a charter schoolto pull off performance assessment well—and you don’thave to blow up your schedule, either.

Two years ago, Pentucket began a process to redefinethe skills students should be able to demonstrate beforegraduating ready for college or a career.

District officials wanted to assess these skills with theuse of student portfolios in grades four, six, eight, and11. To make sure parents and teachers were invested inthe project, the district held multiple small-group sessionsto define these skills and the learning that would accom-pany them—and all stakeholders were invited.

“The fact that it’s a community-created document putsa lot of weight behind it,” says Assistant SuperintendentBill Hart.

From these meetings evolved Pentucket’s five Habitsof Learning: thinking, communication, collaboration,independence, and creative exploration. These five Habitsare infused throughout the district’s core curriculum.

“It drives me crazy when people talk about these skillsas soft skills,” Hart says. “We have to think of these21st-century skills as content that should be taught—andthen give students feedback on their progress toward meet-ing these skills.”

As was the case at Parker, educators needed time to de-velop a shared vision for how to teach and evaluate theseskills. In the project’s first year, Pentucket gave its teach-ers 20 early release days—90 minutes of extra time everyother week—for this planning and collaboration to occur.This school year, teachers will have 16 early release days.

Teachers also could attend voluntary summer sessions,for which they received either in-service credit or a stipend.Although these sessions were not mandatory, the district stillhad at least 50 percent of its teachers participate, Hart says.

And though there was some pushback from staff, hesays, spelling out clear expectations helped—as did forc-ing the issue.

“To bring about change,” Hart says, “you have to becourageous enough to say: This is what we think is bestfor students, and this is what we’re going to do.”

A ‘performance-driven world’Teachers and administrators at both Parker and

Pentucket agree: When parents see an exhibition of theirchildren’s work, it’s a powerful moment.

“I can’t tell you how many parents left in tears,” Hartsays, because they were proud of how much work theirchildren had done—and moved by how well their chil-dren were able to articulate it.

Performance assessment resonates with parents, headds, because they “want their kids to be able to navi-gate what is a performance-driven world. … I’ve neverheard a parent say it’s important to memorize the qua-dratic formula.”

Massucco shares a similar thought: “Performance as-sessment is a great thing. It’s what people do in their lives.I’ve never taken a test in my job.”

Before NCLB introduced an era of greater account-ability in schools, there wasn’t a lot of control over thequality of performance assessment, Kahl acknowledges,and that led many critics to deride what they believed wasits “loosey-goosey” approach.

But aligning performance-based assessment to com-mon standards and ensuring its reliability, he says, willgo a long way toward easing critics’ concerns—and hesees a place for performance assessment alongside othermeasures of student achievement.

“Is it worth the additional time and expense?” he asks.“I think it is. But you have to account for this additionaltime and expense.”

Brown remembers the earlier criticism well, and that’sone reason she’s so passionate about her center’s workin assuring high-quality performance assessment.

“I feel like this is the window where we either get thisright—or we screw it up for a really long time,” she cau-tions. “And that would be sad. We’d lose a whole newgeneration of students.”

Dennis Pierce is the editor of eSchool News.

Performance assessment ...continued from page 22

eSN

Performance Assessment

It’s all about student learning. Period. measuredprogress.org

Measured Progress has 30 years of performance assessment experience in more than a dozen states, from creating and administering tasks to scoring the results. We’ve supported its use for instructional and accountability purposes—for both general and special student populations.

We’ve learned much over the years. These lessons, plus significant advances in technology, promise to make this new generation of performance assessments more powerful and efficient than ever.

We’re now at the forefront of using it as a core element in the latest education reforms—

� �� developing a range of performance tasks for instructional and accountability purposes at the classroom, district, and state levels;

� �� supporting local educators in creating, evaluating, and scoring performance tasks;

� �� applying performance assessment results to evaluate instructional programs; and

� �� researching the use of performance assessment results as one input to the evaluation of teaching effectiveness.

When it comes to performance assessment, it pays to go with a leader.

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